Category: Daily Goody

Email from Danny Stern:

Hey Chris,

Hope your new year is “sounding great.”

I enjoyed your episode on the MKH 416. I’ve actually been sitting on one of my own for years that I’ve had for video use. And it only hit me earlier recently that I own a mic a lot of podcasters and VO folk aspire to get.

But while listening to your podcast I wondered why you have not chosen to use it for your own show (aside from your meditation vids) considering the quality and advantages such as great rejection from the sides and back. Does it just come down to the loss of proximity effect? Can it not be adjusted in post to get the tone you want? Any other downsides to using it as a primary mic in the studio?

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought myself to start using it instead of my SM7b. I’m very happy with the Shure for my voice. But like a lot of podcasters I’m in a mostly untreated room (blanket on a Cstand). And I was thinking the strong sound rejection of the 416 might be an overall improvement. For the past few months I’ve used the 416 for when I need to do VO work on the road as a way to deal with changing hotel room sound “qualities” and it’s been good.

As silly as it may be, one thing that has kept me from trying a switch is not being able to find a (good) scissors style boom arm that is not counterweighted for a much heavier mic. If you know of any that would work, I’d love to know. As well, I’m hoping you can share what that shock mount is that you are using.

Please keep up the great work you’re doing.

~Danny Stern, Producer and Host of the Art Dealer Show – http://artdealer.show/

My reply:

To shock mount my 416 I got the Rycote INV-7 HG MkIII. It’s really good.

Regarding a boom arm that would work well with the 416, I have no idea about that.

My main observations about my 416 so far:

• Because I sit close to a wall (just behind my computer), the 416 seems to be picking up some reflections from the wall and making the low-mids sound a bit wonky. After researching this a bit I learned that 416’s work best in big open spaces, and not as well in small spaces.
• Even though it has a tighter pickup pattern than most mic’s, it’s also a condenser and WAY more sensitive than the RE20 that I use for my podcast. The 416 picks up much more room reverb as well as my HVAC unit sound from across the house! Note: My “studio” (basement) is not acoustically treated very much.

Yes, the proximity effect of my RE20 is still a huge reason why it’s still my main podcasting mic, along with not picking up so much room reverb and noise, etc. And I like to get right up on the RE20 as well, like around 1″ to 1-1/2″ away.

Also, the windscreen that comes with the 416 is OK but if you get right up on the 416 like I do on my RE20, the plosives are out of control. So you either need to stay further away, or I guess I could get an additional pop filter or something.

Hope this helps.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

Plugins are audio processors which you can use inside your audio production software.

Most audio production software include some built-in processors like noise reduction, EQ, compressors, and more.

There are also many third-party processors which you can “plug in” to your audio software, and lots of these actually model classic audio processing gear because a lot of the older gear sounded awesome. In general, these third-party plugins are higher quality than the ones that come with most audio software.

So, plugin is a generic word applied to all these audio processors.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

Signal Flow is the journey of an audio signal from somewhere to somewhere and including all the cables, gear, processes and conversions along the way. (Examples below)

It’s good to know the signal flow of all your audio because it helps with identifying problems, understanding why the audio sounds like it does, and understanding that when you adjust the audio anywhere along the flow, that adjustment will affect all the subsequent processes that the signal flows to.

General examples:

• Microphone to a channel strip (which contains many processes) to an audio interface into your computer into your DAW software through a plugin and then recorded.
• In post-production, the recorded track can flow through many plugins (one after the other in a chosen order) and then combine with all the other tracks and then through the mastering processing and then rendered as a final episode.

Along the way there are many opportunities for the signal to be degraded, so it’s good to know your signal flow.

We will discuss more details about this in future posts.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

A/D stands for “Analog to Digital”, and it refers to the process of converting an analog audio signal into digital audio information.

Examples of A/D conversion:

• A USB microphone has onboard A/D converters that convert the analog signal of your voice into digital information, which then enters your computer through the USB cable.
• When you plug an XLR (analog) microphone into an audio interface or digital recorder, the audio interface and recorder do the A/D conversion.

D/A stands for “Digital to Analog”, and it does the exact opposite conversion of the A/D converters. D/A converters convert digital audio information back into an analog audio signal so you can hear it.

Examples of D/A conversion:

• When you play any audio on your computer/phone/digital recorder, your computer/phone/digital recorder converts the digital audio information into an analog signal which is then sent to the little speakers in your phone/earbuds/headphones in order to create sound so you can hear it.
• If you play audio on your phone and your phone is connected to a Bluetooth speaker, the digital audio signal travels from your phone to the speaker (through the air!), and then the speaker converts the digital audio information into an analog signal which is then sent to its physical speaker in order to create sound so you can hear it.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

Students at Podcast Engineering School are tasked with completing a class project at the end of the 7th and final Live class.

When the student completes this small project, which entails producing a short podcast episode, they are awarded with a Certificate of Completion which they can proudly display everywhere.

This means a lot to the student of course, but it also means a lot to anyone who is thinking of hiring that graduate of PES.

In a world where anyone can claim to be a podcast producer or editor, PES graduates are knowledgeable and reliable professionals.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

Meaning, finding folks who want their podcast recordings edited and finalized, and paying you to do that.

There are many ways, but one is simply:

Introduce yourself to individuals and companies, and offer to answer any questions they may have about podcasting or podcast production.

Be a resource and a professional.

And realize that you’re probably never going to hear from 90% of these folks, so don’t hard sell or be pushy — just be nicey nice.

You will attract good people.

*And I created a small course called Getting New Clients at Higher Rates — it’s a MASSIVE kick in the butt to help you get new clients more quickly.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

When you’re converting your final episodes in to MP3’s, be aware that in some software there are different qualities of encoding you can choose.

And I’m not talking about bit rate or sample rate — I’m talking about a setting which tells the software to encode the MP3 quickly giving lower quality audio, or encode slowly giving higher quality.

Not all software gives you this choice, but its worth making sure that you’re choosing the highest quality encoding in whatever software you’re using.

iZotope doesn’t give you a choice because they correctly assume you want the highest quality encoding. Thanks iZotope!

These apps DO give you a choice (thank goodness most of them default to the “highest quality” setting):

• Reaper
• Sound Forge
• TwistedWave

After all your hard work creating episodes, please make sure that you encode at the highest quality (slowest encoding time)!

Does your software give you a choice?

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

Breathing is part of speaking.

If you were to delete all of a person’s breaths between speaking, that would sound extremely unnatural.

Probably the only thing that sounds more unnatural than that is when you remove, let’s say, half of a breath. It will sound really weird.

So when you’re editing out pauses or “dead air,” be sure not to chop off parts of anyone’s breaths.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

If you’re unsure about how to process your voice to sound great using EQ, compression, etc., maybe I can help.

I’ve had many PES students and TPES listeners ask me to process their voice to where I think it sounds best and then share my settings with them so they can use those same settings on their voice going forward. Everyone has been really happy with their custom settings. I think this process works really well because of my audio engineering experience, my tuned studio monitors, and my ears.

This process is most easily done using the Scheps Omni Channel by Waves because it’s a great quality plugin and it includes all the types of processing you could possibly want when mixing. And it frequently goes on sale for $29.

Here’s how we would do this:

I’ll process your audio using my Scheps Omni Channel plugin to make it sound great, then I’ll send you all my settings which you can dial into YOUR Scheps Omni Channel plugin to make you sound great, every episode.

This is a service I will now offer on a limited basis.

Message me if you’re interested; all you would need to send me is a raw recording of your voice which has not yet been processed in any way, as well as the introductory price is $195 per voice.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

…which overall is a very good service for recording podcasts over the internet.

First, please note that I currently pay for the Ringr service and have done so for the past 3 years at least. I don’t actually use it very often but I like to have it handy just in case any of the other services I use fail (Zencastr and Squadcast).

Second, Ringr DOES have several features that are very handy in some situations, like when a guest must join from their mobile phone they can use the Ringr mobile app to connect and record in higher audio quality than standard phone call quality. Also, in general Ringr is a stable platform when accessing it both from a web browser and mobile app.

So here are my frustrations: (in no particular order)

*And if you can illuminate me and others on how to avoid or overcome any of these issues, please share your knowledge with us 😉

1. There is no chat functionality within sessions, so in order to help each other connect properly or troubleshoot any problems (like if you SEE that someone is connected but you can’t HEAR them), participants must struggle to call each other on the phone or Skype in order to figure things out.
2. You are not able to add a participant to a session after starting the session. You must create an entirely new session, again enter ALL the participants email addresses, and then start the new session. And pray that you don’t have to do all this again 5 minutes later in order to add ANOTHER participant.
3. You are not able to stop the recording within a session and then start recording again within the same session. I’m not sure if this is technically possible, but I tried it and everything went haywire because everyone’s files were being uploaded and I could see people but not hear them, etc., so I just ended up creating an entirely new session. Ugh, see above.
4. Ringr doesn’t record frequencies above 11 kHz, which eliminates lots of clarity from every person on every recording. But for some reason AFTER a session Ringr can deliver a recording to you at a full-fidelity sample rate, like 44.1 kHz, BUT the audio WITHIN this “higher quality file” is NOT higher quality in terms of the actual frequency range represented there BECAUSE the original Ringr recordings are only captured at 22 kHz sample rate. So, on the surface, it appears that Ringr can deliver audio at 44.1 kHz but that’s simply not the case.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

Here’s an amateur mistake when using an EQ, for example:

You open the EQ and boost the low end A LOT because it sounds huge, and then you boost the high end A LOT because it adds lots of clarity.

Sometimes this method will work.

In reality, the amount we boost in the moment usually ends up being too much when we evaluate the sound later. Meaning, usually we boost frequencies that sound good but we boost them TOO much.

Here’s a method that helps solve that problem:

(Again we will use EQ as the example but this method applies to all different signal processing)

1. First, do what the amateur does – find what frequencies sound good and boost them (or find which frequencies sound bad and subtract them).
2. Then, back off on the AMOUNT that you added or subtracted. Meaning, if you boosted some low end 6 dB, back it off so you’re only boosting about 4 dB.
3. Then, stick with that sound for a short time, maybe 2-5 minutes, while you’re working on other tracks or editing, etc.
4. After hearing for a bit how your +4 dB of low end EQ sounds in the mix, you will more accurately be able to decide whether that still sounds good, or whether you should add more low end (maybe your initial amount of 6 dB WAS correct), or whether you should back it down to adding only 1 or 2 dB.
5. Obviously you can iterate this process many times within a 10 or 20 minute timeframe and achieve great results with processing your audio just the right amount.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

My studio setup is in a fairly quiet area of my house, but when my family members are doing normal things around the house, the noise they make sometimes makes it into my recordings and streams.

When I’m about to record any episode or voiceover that’s really important, I will ask my family to not make noise for the duration of my recording session. This works pretty well but I wish I didn’t have to hinder their activities AT ALL. I wish I didn’t have to ask them to be quiet.

I’m going to start looking into options with regards to building a soundproof room/studio for myself, or maybe getting one of those pre-made whisper rooms, etc.

Up until now I’ve avoided any major construction because, well, one thing is the expense, and secondly I’m concerned that “the studio” may be an issue if and when we sell our home.

Do you have any thoughts or any advice for me?

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

Thank goodness.

It was a blunder not to allow multitrack recording when it first launched a few months ago, but they added it relatively quickly (after so much negative feedback) so that’s good.

This unit is a landmark release in the podcasting space because it does so much at such a high quality. It’s not cheap, though, at $599.

I haven’t been able to try it out yet, but our good buddy Bandrew Scott at Podcastage has done a great job showing you all its features and how to use it, etc.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

In general, here are the steps I took to process Jennifer Longworth’s voice in episode 115 of my Podcast Engineering Show.

Her raw recording was extremely dynamic, meaning that at times it got REALLY LOUD and other times it was really quiet. And you already know how annoying, difficult and painful it can be to listen to a podcast where it gets really loud then really soft.

So, in general, here’s how I processed her track:

• A compressor with fast attack and fast release (to reel in her loud laughs, etc.)
• A bit of EQ
• Another compressor with a longer release (to help level out the loud and quiet parts)
• A multi-band compressor (to help control various frequency bands)
• The Vocal Rider (!)

In the end, I think this did a good job of evening out her level and making it more present and listenable, especially in louder environments like cars, gyms, etc.

What do you think?

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

Besides having lots of clarity and good tone overall, the Electro-Voice RE320 has one really good feature that would benefit any podcaster:

A strong output level.

Every microphone outputs its audio signal at a certain level (qualified in the specification called ‘Sensitivity’).

Some microphones have a relatively weak output level which you must boost it A LOT to bring the level up to line level. The Shure SM7B is one of these and that’s why some people say the SM7B is “gain hungry.”

But the RE320 is strong like Bull.

In the world of podcasting, where most people don’t have a strong or high quality mic preamp, the RE320 works well because it doesn’t overwork your mic preamp too much.

Of course another consideration that factors into the “how much to crank up your mic preamp” conversation is for the person speaking into the mic to use good mic technique. (Here’s a video I made on mic technique like 100 years ago, back when I had a beard)

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

It’s difficult to drive a car unless you know what a gas pedal is, and what a brake pedal is, and what a steering wheel is.

Yet, it’s amazing how many podcasters aren’t even aware of some of the most fundamental audio concepts.

This is why the first class of Podcast Engineering School focuses almost entirely on audio fundamentals.

Once you understand the fundamentals, the more advanced concepts will immediately make sense, to some degree. Initially you may not know how or when to use these advanced audio techniques, but at least you will know what they are and generally what they do. And you’ll be ready to learn more advanced concepts BECAUSE you already understand the basics.

The other vital thing that understanding the fundamentals gives you – confidence! And this is HUGE in terms of your overall success.

It’s “cool” these days to learn the minimum and just grab some software and “do stuff,” but the people who really succeed in this world are individuals who learn their craft well and become an expert. The best part? No one can ever take that accomplishment away from them, and no one will ever be able to take that accomplishment away from you 😉

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

A lot.

But seriously….., although that was serious… 😉

Your answer, which you must arrive at in your own mind and heart, depends on several factors:

• The work involved in producing the client’s episodes. (straight-up interview, or extreme RadioLab-style production, or something in between?)
• How many episodes total are you producing as per the agreement.
• The total time it will take you to produce each episode.
• How quick of a turnaround time the client is expecting for each episode.
• Any other factors that are important to you. Spend some time thinking about this.

NOTE: Also see Deciding to Edit Other Shows for Money

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

When engineers first tried to put music onto vinyl records, they ran into a huge problem – the low frequencies in the music would make the cutting needle go so deep into the vinyl, as well as cut too wide a groove, that the vinyl would be ruined.

How did they solve this problem?

First, before cutting the vinyl records, they would process the audio so that the low frequencies were tamed/controlled enough to not shred the vinyl.

And this step became known as Mastering.

These days the mastering step is still the final step in music and podcast production and mainly consists of using EQ, compression, limiting and a host of other processing to make the final track sound awesome as well as be finalized to the correct loudness level.

FYI, iZotope Ozone is a really good mastering software that I use.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.

It is possible, after removing a particular Umm, that the resultant dialogue feels unnaturally rushed at the exact spot where the umm was previously. Especially if the Umm comes after an in-breath.

So, if you have:

[in-breath] “Umm” [Start of sentence]

…after removing the umm, the start of the sentence may seem to come in too quickly and unnaturally.

Solution: Instead of highlighting the Umm and deleting it, highlight it and make that section silent. Then remove about 80% of the silence, leaving about 20% of the silence there. Now, the edit feels much more natural 😉 Also, depending on the specific Umm you’re removing, you can play with those 80/20 numbers and use 70/30 or 60/40 instead – whatever sound best.

Note: A similar problem can arise when the Umm comes before a breath as well, but the solution is the same.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

.